


Storm Tide

by Rowana77



Category: Shetland (TV)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-07-07
Updated: 2020-07-25
Packaged: 2021-03-04 17:53:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,573
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25120441
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rowana77/pseuds/Rowana77
Summary: In advance of a growing winter storm, Jimmy Perez goes to the island of Yell to investigate what seems to be a routine complaint -- and ends up in grave danger. First chapter of a growing novella. Your feedback and comments are very welcome!
Comments: 10
Kudos: 27





	1. 1.

Perez lay still for a moment, where they’d kicked him, and listened as the van door slammed and the engine revved, taking the scrawny muscle-man and his driver off into the scrim of the worsening blizzard. The engine roared and the tires scudded aimlessly for a moment in the wet slush, throwing a freezing shower of grey wetness over Perez. 

Insult to injury, quite literally, he found himself thinking… _am I delirious already?_

And then the rubber found its footing, and the van rocketed off into the white.

He was alone. Perez tried to blink the blood out of his eyes, to ignore the pain that throbbed from his chest, his leg, his head, and seemed to consume his very being. Where am I? He knew he could freeze to death very quickly out here; his coat was back in the warehouse where they’d worked him over. Surviving should be his only concern right now. He had to move.

 _I’m in a ditch, on a road…somewhere in Yell,_ he thought. That was about all his brain could handle at the moment. He sensed water off to the side – Whale Firth, maybe? He didn’t know, didn’t have a clue where they’d dropped him. It was getting hard to think. The wind was worsening, cold as a knife. His jumper was soaked wet with something – blood, he thought – and starting to freeze. He didn’t have much time.

He rolled onto his hands and knees, trying to ignore the pain in his leg, and almost fainted. _Don’t…pass…out_ , he gritted to himself. _That will be you, done for._

He waited a moment for the dizziness to pass, then tried it again, slowly, carefully. Cantilevered himself to his feet, swaying against the growing force of the gale. The snow slapping into his face felt almost like a blessing, cooling the burning pain of his contusions.

But he knew that was an illusion.

He’d gone on his own on the ferry to Yell, and had driven from the ferry port to a croft near Aylwick that morning to investigate a report of gunshots fired. Routine, he’d thought – just stop by and collect the witness report, talk to the man who’d called the Lerwick station four times in 12 hours in increasing agitation at the gunfire he kept hearing over the hill. Perez should have sent Sandy or Tosh to take the report, but Sandy had taken the morning to attend to a personal matter, with Perez’s permission, and Tosh was working on the Tulloch case, which Rhona wanted them to wrap as soon as possible.

Perez had rather fancied getting out of the station anyway. A large storm was moving in and a part of him loved that feeling – to be out on the water, with the falling air pressure and the growing surge of the seas as the ferry plowed over the waves. The storm would likely close all the ferry traffic for a while, so best to get the report taken, the thing over with, and return to Lerwick before the full force of the storm front hit.

But when he’d reached the croft…Perez now struggled to go over the sequence of events in his mind. _I probably have a concussion_ , he thought…that would account for his jumbled thoughts and the ongoing terrible headache. The man’s body on the floor of the barn…and then pain and blackness.

Then he’d awakened in a different place, a dark place, lit only by a single lamp, and the bearded man…and some shadowy others. Some kind of large barn…warehouse, maybe...

Beardy had wanted to know who he was. Perez had told him, and Beardy didn’t believe it, had laughed. One of the others…longish blond hair, slight but muscly build…had fished Perez’s police ID out of his pocket. Showed it to Beardy.

Beardy wasn’t laughing any more.

“Shetland Police?” he'd asked incredulously. The accent was pure Glasgow. “Seriously?” He'd walked over to where Perez was tied to a chair. “Shetland Police? All alone? Or are you the whole force?” Chortling at his own joke. Sure of himself. Then he'd casually backhanded Perez across the face, and Perez had tasted blood. “This ain’t a matter for the police.”

“It is now,” Perez had said through the blood.

_Who are these guys?_

“’Perez’?” Beardy had read the name before tossing the ID to the floor. “You sure you ain’t the Mexican police? Now that would be something.”

The minions in the shadows had tittered.

“I think I’ll make you a statement,” said Beardy. “As in, I will make a statement out of you.”

He'd nodded to the shadow men. “Take care of him. The way we did in…” and then had come what to Perez sounded like “ka-johnny.”

Perez had forced himself to remember that name as they worked him over thoroughly, professionally. He hadn’t thought it was possible to be in that much pain. They were keeping him alive while wreaking the maximum agony they could manage. They hit him in the head, the chest, the stomach, the thighs, the shins. Maybe with leaded weights or brass knuckles. After a while it didn’t matter.

It was all just pain and blood.

 _Ka-johnny? Kajani? Cajanni? A place name? Middle Eastern? Russian? Norwegian?_ Strange how the brain keeps working through so much pain. It gave him a focus, though. It was a trick he’d learned long ago; to survive, you have to focus. You have to picture yourself getting out of it alive, and coming back to finish the job.

He’d passed out, finally, mercifully.

Awakened in the back of the swaying van, on the floor, with Blondie watching over him. His hands were untied. He was not a threat to them any more. Every jolt of the van caused a wave of agony that tore through him. _At least one broken rib, maybe more,_ he thought, trying to assess the pain in his chest. His right leg throbbed and both shins blazed with agony, but he didn’t think they were broken. His head pounded and his brain reeled as the van hit a bump and slammed his temple into the floor.

 _Ka-johnny, ka-johnny…_ he kept his eyes closed and kept it on endless repeat.

Were they taking him somewhere to shoot him? More than likely. Something in him was weary, was almost done, didn’t care. But then he thought of Cassie.

_Cassie. Ka-johnny._

_Gotta live._

_Can’t leave her with just Duncan. We love him…but he’s not exactly role model of the year._

Perez knew he was thinking in just the very broadest strokes right now.

 _Cassie. Ka-johnny._ It was all he could do.

That and gather himself for one final fight. He’d feigned unconsciousness, hoped that with the element of surprise he could at least take Blondie out before they shot him.

But when the moment came, it had surprised him.

The van scudded to a halt. Feet stomped around the side, the back doors opened, a wall of cold wind blasted in. Blondie suddenly kicked Perez out of the van, and he landed hard on frozen ground, with the wet slush soaking through his clothes. Stomper landed one last good kick on Perez’s back as he lay there, stunned.

And then the van had roared off into the blizzard.

Now, through a haze of his own blood, he tried to see through the blowing snow and the midnight blue darkness. Drifts were piling up along the road, and he could see no lights in any direction.

Why had they left him alive? His brain hurt too much to puzzle it out.

He heard the sound of the sea again, off to his left. The open sea, or Whale Firth, maybe, he thought again, trying to relax into the intuitive inner mapping skill of the native Shetlander, of one who had sailed these waters and walked these islands all his life. He knew these islands, every mile of them, by feel and sound and smell as much as by sight.

And if it was Whale Firth, depending on how far north he was, he knew he was in grave danger. There were very few crofts up here, and almost nowhere he could go for shelter from this storm.

He could feel himself weakening with each step. He forced himself to trudge on against the wind.

It was so tempting, would be so easy, to just lie down for a while and gather his strength.

Just for a few moments.

_Cassie._

What was the other part of the mantra? He’d lost it.

He focused on Cassie’s face. She seemed so close.

_Hey, darlin’._

_Hiya, Dad._

She was grinning at him, in that goofy little-girl way he knew so well, now the face of the young woman she’d somehow so quickly become. It was Midsummer and they were on the patio in the warm simmer dim. There were wine glasses on the little table. Out on Lerwick Harbor, the _Dim Riv_ floated by, its dragon prow bobbing, packed with tourists, their chatter drifting across the water.

_You know I love you, right? More than anything in this world._

_I know, Dad, ya numpty. You don’t have to say it._

Oh, but I want to say it. Again and again. I so much want to say it, Cassie. Let me say it to you just once more.

He fell to his knees. The whiteness was everywhere, soft, soft.

He was sinking into it.

_Let me say it to you, forever._

_Cassie._

_Don’t go._

She was fading away.

His eyes had almost closed. The snow bed beckoned, soft, warm.

A light blinked on.

He closed his eyes hard against the snow, opened them, focused, shook his head painfully.

_A light._

The light was still there, a steady yellow glow, gleaming through the curtain of whirling snow.

Just off to his right. And up. A hill?

_Cassie._

With a supreme effort, he forced himself to his feet again, stumbled forward, felt the ground under the snow drifts rising under his feet. Every step forward, upward was an exercise in agony.

He could see it now. The golden light, streaming out from a window. A croft house, perhaps...

_Warmth, help._

He reached out. The light shimmered. He was almost there.

_Cassie._

_Fran. Help me get to Cassie._

Her name was on his freezing lips.

_Don’t go._

And then suddenly all was whiteness.

He fell into it. So white and pure.

And cold as eternity.

###


	2. Chapter 2

The wind off the North Atlantic howled and battered at the windows, and Abby thought, not for the first time, that she’d been foolish to move up here, an idiot to think she could brave the elements and make a quiet home here on the edge of the Hill of Markemouth, where the croft house sat facing the full brunt of the ocean gales that seemed to aim directly at this northernmost part of Yell.

 _How did anyone ever make a go of it here?_ she mused as she checked the windows in the kitchen, which were shaking loudly but holding fast.

Pyewacket had burrowed into his box of soft old towels by the stove, but he emerged and wound himself around her feet as she walked back to the front room.

“Pye, it’s OK; just a storm,” she murmured to the big black and white cat, but he seemed unperturbed. _That was really more to reassure myself than him,_ she thought, picking up the solid feline and listening to his loud purr.

The summer and autumn had been a challenge, to be sure – leaving everything in her former life behind, moving here to this old house that had once belonged to her grandparents and had then stood abandoned and vacant for many years, still belonging to the family but with no one to take care of it. The house had looked dilapidated, as was to be expected, but she’d hired a few local men to help her bring it back to livable status, and they’d found that the bones of it were strong.

“Aye, I recall your grandfather well.” Her neighbor down the hill, Tyrus Robertson, had stopped by on a chilly day in October. Leaning on the stone wall that marked out the front boundary of her property, the old crofter had wrinkled his forehead as he looked at the newly refurbished house, gleaming with a fresh coat of whitewash. “He was a good man, and this was a happy house for such a long time, back when there were more people about here. Aye, and now it’s come back to itself, now that you’re here again.”

He'd chuckled, taking a pipe out of his pocket and tamping in a jot of tobacco before lighting it. He took a draw, and puffed out a wreath of smoke as a pair of curlews wafted oceanward overhead, piping their rising, bubbling trills. “But ye know that – I recall you as a wee peerie thing, visiting here, chasing the sheep, playing with the dogs.”

The old crofter had sighed. “After your grandmother passed and your family left, he held on here a good long time, tryin’ to make a go of it. But it got to be too much for him – the sheep, the weather, the hill…he had a lad helping him, but he couldn’t hold on. He had to leave the croft and move finally to the care home in Lerwick.”

Abby knew all that, of course, but she'd let Tyrus’s words wash over her as she tried to plumb what she was feeling now, in this moment. _Is this really home now?_

Tyrus and Abby had both looked out to sea. The autumn light was already fading behind the hill; there was a deeper, more portentous chill in the air; winter would be here soon. But for a brief moment, one last vivid ray of sunlight had struck the calm sea, spotlighting a little boat that bobbed in its direct spotlight.

“God’s messengers slide down to earth along that sunbeam,” she could recall her granddad saying of such phenomena when she’d visited here from Lerwick as a girl. And in that instant it had almost seemed as if he were there beside her again, telling her this was right, this was good, that this old croft was indeed her destiny.

Abby had never thought she would return to Shetland once she’d left it behind. She and her parents had moved to Toronto after her grandmother and then grandfather had died, and she’d grown up there on the outskirts of that cosmopolitan city, had attended McMaster University, where she’d received her physician assistant degree – and then, in a whirlwind couple of years, had met Bill, fallen in love with him and married. He was a resident at St. Michael’s Hospital and they’d worked there together, planning on building their careers and then starting a family.

But then had come the global coronavirus pandemic. She remembered the utter confusion and fear of those early days, as the medical community had tried to get a handle on it and as their ICU, like those of every other hospital in the city, had filled up. She and Bill were working from dawn until well into the night at first, as the influx of new patients never seemed to stop and the death count mounted. But Canada had been quick to shut down and quick to establish testing and tracing, and soon became one of the world’s COVID-19 success stories, if “success” was a word to ever be attributed to the whole mess.

Then one night Bill had come home with an excited look on his face. “Lee and Drs. Singh, Thompson and I have volunteered to go to New York,” he said. “They need us there; they’re overwhelmed.”

She’d felt a flutter of fear in the pit of her stomach, but suppressed it. “Bill, it will be dangerous. They don’t have a handle on it in the U.S. No one knows if they will, with all the confusion in the messaging, from the top down.”

“I know,” he’d said. “But they need us. This is why I became a doctor, to help people wherever they need me.” A light was shining in his eyes; this was exactly why she loved him; his idealism, his dedication. She couldn’t say no, couldn’t tell him of the trepidation she felt.

Three days later, he was on a chartered flight to LaGuardia with the other Toronto doctors.

Six weeks later, he was dead.

He’d contracted the virus perhaps that first week he’d been in New York City, and showed his first symptoms a week later. Dr. Lee Ho had been with him the whole time; they’d been best friends, all three of them, since medical school. She'd flown to New York immediately, but they wouldn't let her in the hospital; not even close family members were allowed in the COVID ICU. But Lee had been with Bill, at least. He’d held the iPad for Bill to speak to Abby, and then later, when they put Bill on the ventilator, for her to speak to him. Day after day, telling him stories she didn’t know he even heard as his condition declined, telling him how much she loved him, telling him to be strong and get better and to _please, please_ come back to her.

Lee had also held the iPad on that last terrible night, when she desperately urged Bill to hang on as his organs failed, and then the nurses and doctors had rushed in and Lee had to go, and it all went black…

She shook her head now, trying to get the images out of her brain. It had been a year now, more than a year – but the images and the wracking grief came back in waves sometimes. Often. And being alone in an old house on a mostly deserted headland in the midst of a serious North Atlantic gale didn’t help much, even though, she reminded herself, _this is home now. At least until I figure out my life. I can't complain; I know what winters here in Shetland are like._

 _And not entirely alone_ , she mused, blinking the wetness out of her eyes as she stroked Pye’s soft fur.

_But about as far away from people as I can possibly get._

Back here at the edge of the world, on this little rock in the middle of the sea.

Pye suddenly wriggled, oozed out of her arms and loped over to the front window. He jumped up to the sill and paraded back and forth, stopped, looked out into the wild, snowy blackness --- and let out a deep howl the likes of which she’d never heard from him before.

“Pye! What’s wrong?”

She hoped he wasn’t sick. There were no veterinarians up here in north Yell, just the sheep and cattle woman a few miles away down in Mid Yell who took care of the crofter’s animals and probably dogs and cats too. But there was no cell reception here in the house -- except by hiking up to the very top of the hill. And even then it was spotty.

And no one could get up here in this blizzard tonight anyway. Nothing on this island was going to move tonight.

Pye looked at her, the pupils enlarged in his green-yellow eyes. And yowled that bellowing bass howl again.

 _I am honestly the worst cat mom in the world, taking a living creature up here where the nearest vet is miles away and the weather's like this_ , she thought, walking quickly to the window. _We’re stuck in the middle of this storm. I won't be able to get the car down the hill. I can’t even be trusted to be responsible for a cat._

As she reached the window, Pye looked out into the night again, and she followed his gaze. The light from the window shone out through the curtain of snow, and she could just make out a dark lump almost at the edge of the light. Snow was rapidly covering it.

_THAT'S not supposed to be there – what is it?_

She wondered if it were an animal – a sheep, perhaps, from Tyrus’s croft, wandered up here in the gale.

 _That’s what it must be._ There were no other large animals on Yell, except a few ponies south of here. And the seals, who would never venture this far from the shore.

Tyrus couldn't afford to lose a sheep.

She found the torch in the kitchen, grabbed her sweater from the hook by the door, pulled on her boots, and opened the door into the full driving force of the wind-blown snow. “Stay in!” she ordered Pye as he jumped off the sill and followed her to the door.

She shut the door firmly behind her and walked out into the gale, her torchlight a feeble finger through the swirling flakes as she hurried through the drifts to the dark mound she’d seen through the window.

It was almost completely covered with snow now. If she had looked out the window just a few minutes later, she would never have seen it.

She knelt down and brushed away the wet snow.

“Oh, my dear God,” she breathed when she encountered not wet wool or a spindly sheep leg, but a bloodstained grey sweater, and the cold slope of a shoulder inside it.


End file.
